I
am writing to share exciting news: today, we are making journal
content on JSTOR published prior to 1923 in the United States and prior
to 1870 elsewhere, freely available to the public for reading and
downloading. This includes nearly 500,000 articles from more than 200
journals, representing approximately 6% of the total content on JSTOR.

We
are taking this step as part of our continuous effort to provide the
widest possible access to the content on JSTOR while ensuring the
long-term preservation of this important material. To date, we have
primarily provided access to people through a growing base of libraries
and institutions. In 1995, only ten journals were digitized and
available to just a few universities. Today, millions of people from
more than 7,000 institutions in 153 countries have access to journals on
JSTOR through their universities, colleges, high schools, businesses,
research institutions, museums, historical societies, and public
libraries.

This constitutes remarkable progress and impact, but
there remain many people who are not affiliated with institutions who
want access to the knowledge preserved in JSTOR. We have taken a variety
of steps over the years to serve them. First, in 1999 we began
partnering with our publishers and scholarly societies to provide access
to their journals to their society members and other individuals
through what we call our Individual Access Program. More than 300
journals are accessible to individuals in this way today. Second, in
2006 we initiated another program–the Publisher Sales Service–to enable
publishers to sell their articles to the public through the JSTOR
platform. There are 762 journals that have articles for sale in this way
today, with prices set by each individual publisher. Third, in 2009 we
began partnering with universities and colleges to offer their alumni
access to content on JSTOR. There are 18 schools in this pilot program
today.

While these efforts are serving some users, there is more
that can be done. About a year ago, we started working on a next set of
initiatives to test and provide additional forms of access to content on
JSTOR for individuals. These initiatives include: supporting publishers
who wish to test different price points for their articles that are
part of the Publisher Sales Service; working with our publishers to
experiment with a new capability for individuals to read some articles
online without charge if they register with us; and providing free
access for individuals to the early journal content available through
JSTOR. We are very excited about the potential for this next wave of
efforts. We are confident that they will result in broader access to
scholarship in the near term, and enable JSTOR and our publishers to
test and develop new models that meet the wider public’s needs in the
future.

I hope you share our excitement about today’s
announcement. We look forward to continuing to work with you to further
access to individuals in the future. More information about the Early Journal Content is available, including an FAQ.

On
a final note, I realize that some people may speculate that making the
Early Journal Content free to the public today is a direct response to
widely-publicized events over the summer involving an individual who was
indicted for downloading a substantial portion of content from JSTOR,
allegedly for the purpose of posting it to file sharing sites. While we
had been working on releasing the pre-1923/pre-1870 content before the
incident took place, it would be inaccurate to say that these events
have had no impact on our planning. We considered whether to delay or
accelerate this action, largely out of concern that people might draw
incorrect conclusions about our motivations. In the end, we decided to
press ahead with our plans to make the Early Journal Content available,
which we believe is in the best interest of our library and publisher
partners, and students, scholars, and researchers everywhere.

The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.

The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.

AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.